The Preparations

My husband's colleague, to whom had been passingly mentioned that we were looking for a dog, told us of a family looking to place a black lab mix pup. Would we be interested? Wouldnt we ever! Of course we didnt realise what was to come ... this was after all the first ever dog we would keep (childhood dogs dont count..someone else always had to look after them!) We were thrilled!

The very first thing of course was the momentous - 'choosing of an appropriate dog name'. This became THE topic of discussion, breakfast, noon, evening; on phone, in person; with anyone and everyone unfortunate to be in the vicinity. Books were read, wiki consulted, google worn down. The criteria list itself started running into pages - the name must be short, easy to call, end in -y sound (coz somewhere we read dogs distinguish such names better), but not too common (so top 10 dog names were consulted but out of contention), and of course representative of the personality of the dog (of which all we knew was that he was 4 weeks old, male, completely black and fairly placid)...so on and so forth.

Then of course the actual probables. Blackie was out..(blackie, husband cringed...how unimaginative), so was Kalu (which essentially is Blackie in Hindi), Boy (a name we came across in the book A Dog's Life - Peter Myle) was interesting, but liable for miscommunication with humans. And so the judging process went on. Names were shouted to test for 'shoutability' where almost all the multi-syllabic probables perished. Through much enjoyable argument and counter argument, thoughts, second thoughts, third thoughts and fourth ones, a name was finally found! He would be Nero, which means black in latin and italian, and was the name of an italian king. But of course! A noble name for a noble dog of a noble breed (well breed mix, but we're not picky :) ).

Nero was born on May 14, 2007 to a big Black Labrador dad and a rescued mixed breed chocolate colored mother. He was born about 1:30pm and was the first in a litter of 4 (3 black pups and 1 chocolate colored one). We went to collect Nero on June 16, 2007, once he was old enough to be weaned away from his mother.

Ah the excitement! The entire night before was spent in preparation. Where would he sleep? What would he eat? What would he eat from? What will be the designated toilet area? Old clothes were cleaned and tested for soft comfort before becoming a part of his bedding. An old carton was redesigned to accomodate his bedding and furniture moved around to ensure it got the best place possible. A soft cotton pillow was carefully bubble wrapped, covered in soft cloths and fitted into his box. I'm happy to say that when he finally saw it, he approved whole heartedly. He's not given us any trouble with adapting to sleeping in his designed quarters (8 days and counting :). Of course, we've been told that he should be crate trained, so though we realised that the current system wouldnt last for long (since he was expected to grow fairly big) we figured it would be a good start. Plus the bedding was big enough to get into a bigger crate. We were so excited! Morning couldnt come soon enough for us =D